My superpower as an editor

I have this weird superpower--although I don’t know if you can really call it a superpower. It doesn’t really have any earthly use. But I think it comes from being a word nerd, a language nerd, and being interested in languages other than English. And it’s definitely related to my job of editing in some kind of a way because it’s about language and language processes.

So if you tell me the name of a town or city or geographical feature that’s in a native American language, I can probably tell you in what state or geographic area that thing is located. And, TBH, I’m probably not the only person who can do this. But I seem to have absorbed some of the rules and orthographic tendencies of various native American languages, from reading, and studying maps, etc. and it stuck because language and languages are things I’m really interested in. One time I guessed that a guy I had just met was Hungarian from his last name. I don’t’ speak Hungarian and it’s not a language that is represented in the standard opera rep. I have no idea how I knew it but he was really surprised when I guessed it.

Some of that facility surely comes from working in opera for as long as I did, since opera is a very international industry. In addition to needing to be familiar with the languages in the standard repertory, (romance languages, German, some Slavic languages), you encounter artists from all over the world, and they have names that are unfamiliar to English speakers. I’ve been in rehearsals where the stage managers were the only people in the room speaking English.

So anyway, I was just wondering if anyone else has a superpower--a quirky tendency or talent--that you’re secretly proud of that doesn’t excite admiration in anyone else or offer you any material assistance in your writing or editing work?

But on the other hand, what this means is that I have a really sensitive ear to languages and the patterns of languages and the way language communicates ideas, which means I am very sensitive to what your voice as an author is and to the voices of your characters, and as such I’d be a great editor for your next book!

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